Complications
by Libek
Summary: Grimmjow's world is very simple, but Ichigo's very existence screws up everything he understands completely. Not really a pairingfic, but you can see it that way, if you like.


He was bleeding. He was going to die like this. But all Grimmjow could think was, Fuck. The world had been such a simple place.

There were two kinds of people, two kinds of Hollows, of Arrancar, of Shinigami. The strong and the weak, the prey and the predator, the powerful and the pathetic. This model had served him very well, ever since he'd awakened as a Gillian and pulled away from his mindless brothers to sate a new kind of hunger. He had been strong; they had been weak. He would someday be a Vasto Lorde, and they, well. They wouldn't.

Simple.

Aizen (Aizen-fucking-_sama_, he corrected himself bitterly) and that rock of his had made him stronger, in exchange petty title and fealty. Or, as Grimmjow saw it, in exchange for acknowledgment of the very, very obvious: that his benefactor had a plan, a vision, and that even with this new power, he still wasn't as strong as the man who had given it to him. It didn't seem like a bad bargain, given the options of follow or die, and he had accepted, becoming one of the Espada, replacing the old Vasto Lordes, replacing those who were now weaker than him, and maybe -- just maybe -- fulfilling Aizen-sama's ambitions in the process.

Still simple. Almost primal. Sure, there were some new words in his vocabulary now, new degrees of strength so that he could be strong without being a match for Aizen-sama and weaker than the higher numbers in their group without being weak. He had adjusted pretty well, for all that he wasn't much of a pack animal by nature. (The Hollows who would become his fraccion might have followed him, but he hadn't really been _leading_ them anywhere, and these days Grimmjow knew the difference.)

It was all so fucking simple.

So when had everything turned to shit? When had the world gotten so goddamned _complicated_?

There had been an enemy left alive, some brat of a Shinigami that Ulquiorra had decided should get to stick around and fuck things up, just because he wasn't a threat _yet_. All he'd wanted to do was finish the job and save them all a lot of grief, but Aizen-sama hadn't appreciated it, had sent that bastard Tousen after him, and the kid had gotten away again, survived by the skin of his teeth. And him, well, he'd lost his arm (his goddamned _rank_) for the trouble.

Fine _fucking_ way to say thank you.

And now here the stupid little Shinigami was, fucking things up, trying to rescue people that Aizen-sama seemed to need, just like he'd tried to tell them all. Their mistake.

The kid was already stronger the second time they met. Less wobbly, less hesitant, and at one point he'd pulled this neat trick with a mask that changed a lot more than his fucking appearance. His speed, his power, even his scent were different with that mask on. The waves coming off him didn't trumpet Shinigami anymore. They screamed Hollow.

What the fuck was he? He even had Ulquiorra interested in him, and Ulquiorra wasn't interested in anything. Hadn't he claimed this guy wasn't worth the effort of killing _instantly_?

He'd been strong before, and he was stronger now. Maybe even stronger than him, maybe even stronger than his full release. With the mask and the scent of Hollow...

Someday, he really might have threatened Aizen-sama. It was just a matter of time.

But this part, Grimmjow had still understood. Hollows got stronger very quickly, with or without the Hougyoku to aid them, and the kid had that mask of his, part Hollow the way they were part Shinigami. His growth was a little scary, sure, but it wasn't the part that turned the whole fucking world on its head.

Growth, especially rapid growth, was another part of strength.

Mercy wasn't. Mercy was a part of weakness, by its fucking definition -- it was something that got you real dead, real fast. Mercy was not taking care of an enemy when you had the chance, and letting him heal up so he could come back to rip you apart. Mercy was being stupid and blind and forgetting you weren't invincible. Mercy was assuming your enemy would be so incredibly grateful for your little act of compassion that he'd let you go free the next time _he_ had the opportunity.

Mercy was a habit that powerful people broke as soon as they got strong enough to really like the feeling of being alive.

And the kid was more than powerful enough to have learned better. He had scars, little tears and fissures right there in his reiatsu from a hundred battles with enemies as strong or stronger than him. But still the kid had insisted on sparing his life, insisted on trying to end the fight early because he'd "lost" in some way that wasn't lethal. Insisted now on _saving him_ from that bastard, Nnoitra.

It was enough to really piss a guy off. He wanted to take the kid apart with his bare hands, pick up his goddamned sword and shove it through the back of his skull, stab him again and again until the scent of Hollow was buried far beneath the thick heady scent of blood.

It was enough to really confuse a guy. He didn't actually want to do any of those things.

Grimmjow wasn't sure... _what_ he wanted to do.

The world had been such a simple place. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. Take every last opening you're given, because the other guy is just waiting for a chance to do the same. He'd never wanted a fair fight badly enough to heal his enemy up beforehand. He'd never wanted to fight anyone badly enough to risk his own skin. He'd never had the chance to go for a quick, clean, safe kill and turned it down so that he could almost get himself killed.

It hadn't been about saving Aizen-sama the trouble anymore, or eliminating threats.

And even then he'd thought, Too bad about the mercy thing. Even then he'd known that that was really going to get him killed someday. The kid would pick the wrong guy, sooner or later, and the wrong guy was going to take it like the gift it was and then stab him in the fucking back. He'd die, and the Hollow-scent would die with him.

Or the Hollow-scent would devour him, and he'd die that way, and then pretty soon there would be no more mercy, because Hollows didn't bother with that shit.

How could someone so strong be so fucking weak at the same time? How could someone who'd lasted five seconds with Ulquiorra be about to die now at the hands of that bastard, Nnoitra?

He wasn't a mindless predator, and he liked being alive, but if this kid had killed him, at least it would have been a decent death. Losing to someone stronger, being devoured by the better predator -- that was life, on some level. That was natural, and good, and okay in the end.

This...

This was wrong.

Cinca wasn't stronger than the kid. If he won, it wouldn't be because he had been the _better predator_, but because of that fucking mercy, and his total lack of it. And god help him, Grimmjow really wanted to shove himself up off the ground and stop the fight before it got that far.

Not simple. Not simple at all.

Through the blood loss, through the dizziness and nausea of too much pain, it occurred to him that he wasn't the only one the kid had had this effect on. Neliel's burst of power, Ulquiorra's interest -- supposedly he even had a Quincy working with him, and any Quincy left alive should've hated him to his goddamned core. What the fuck was he, that he could change them all this way, change their very _natures_ in a way that most people couldn't even change themselves, without even really trying.

It was a new type of strength, one he'd never seen before, and slowly Grimmjow found himself thinking that maybe this was how the mercy wouldn't get him killed.

He wondered if the Hollow in him saw that too, or just wrote it off as a weakness the way he had. He wondered why he was so sure the Hollow he could barely sense most of the time was even capable of thinking on that level, when so many of the low-level ones were nothing but hunger and need. He didn't like to admit that he might have been assuming because the Hollow belonging to this Shinigami just had to be special somehow.

Fuck, he hoped the Hollow _did_ swallow this kid, destroying him completely.

Fuck, he really didn't.

Grimmjow let his eyes slip shut. Watching the battle was too hard, he couldn't focus anymore on their distant figures, their clashing zanpakutou, not even the heat of their raging spirit power on his skin. Someone would win, preferably the kid, and maybe then they'd all get promotions.

Or maybe the kid would lose, and the world would be simple again.


End file.
